eamed.

Her soft low voice called him endearing names and he
dreamed that his mother had come to him and that she
had changed so that she was always as she had been that
time after he ran away. He also grew bold and reaching
out his hand stroked the face of the woman on the floor
so that she was ecstatically happy. Everyone in the old
house became happy after the boy went there. The hard
insistent thing in Jesse Bentley that had kept the
people in the house silent and timid and that had never
been dispelled by the presence of the girl Louise was
apparently swept away by the coming of the boy. It was
as though God had relented and sent a son to the man.

The man who had proclaimed himself the only true
servant of God in all the valley of Wine Creek, and who
had wanted God to send him a sign of approval by way of
a son out of the womb of Katherine, began to think that
at last his prayers had been answered. Although he was
at that time only fifty-five years old he looked
seventy and was worn out with much thinking and
scheming. The effort he had made to extend his land
holdings had been successful and there were few farms
in the valley that did not belong to him, but until
David came he was a bitterly disappointed man.

There were two influences at work in Jesse Bentley and
all his life his mind had been a battleground for these
influences. First there was the old thing in him. He
wanted to be a man of God and a leader among men of
God. His walking in the fields and through the forests
at night had brought him close to nature and there were
forces in the passionately religious man that ran out
to the forces in nature. The disappointment that had
come to him when a daughter and not a son had been born
to Katherine had fallen upon him like a blow struck by
some unseen hand and the blow had somewhat softened his
egotism. He still believed that God might at any moment
make himself manifest out of the winds or the clouds,
but he no longer demanded such recognition. Instead he
prayed for it. Sometimes he was altogether doubtful and
thought God had deserted the world. He regretted the
fate that had not let him live in a simpler and sweeter
time when at the beckoning of some strange cloud in the
sky men left their lands and houses and went forth into
the wilderness to create new races. While he worked
night and day to make his farms more productive and to
extend his holdings of land, he regretted that he could
not use